Product Description

Fire! The alarm has sounded in the firehouse, and four lines of firefighters must dash to the blaze to douse the flames. Advance the bucket brigades as close to the fire as possible, but take care -- rushing leads to spilling, and without your precious water, all your efforts will be wasted! Bucket Brigade is the long awaited re-theming of the Reiner Knizia classic Honeybears.

Product Reviews

'Honeybears' is one of the lesser-known games in the Knizia canon. Aimed squarely at the children's game market, it still has plenty of depth for adult gamers as well. Other reviewers once again have beaten me to the punch in describing the mechanics, so I will get on to my impressions.

What makes Honeybears so good is the agonizing decisions of which cards to play. Each time you advance a bear, you are reducing your holdings for that bear, and therefore lowering your chance for a good score. Advance a bear too slowly and the players risk having a negative score for that bear. The choices are few but the ramifications of those choices are difficult and tantalizing in equal degrees.

While a hand composed mostly of wild cards will allow a player to dominate a round of play, it is recommended that one round be played per player to even out the luck factor. Each round is refreshingly short, so this suggestion is more of a blessing than a curse.

Highly recommended for children and adults alike. Locate a copy if you can.

Beautiful game components, fast play and high excitement make Honeybears a fun-filled game each time you play! In true Knizia fashion the choice of which card to play is never easy. You never have enough Joker cards and hoarding your potential high scoring pair of '1' cards could leave your favorite bear in negative scoring territory! You need your opponents' help in advancing bears into positive scoring positions before each round ends. This game is agonizing fun as you wait and watch each turn to see which bears your opponents will advance.

Honeybears is recommended for play with 3-5 people, but I've found it just as enjoyable with two players. You simply deal 13 cards to yourself and your opponent (the equivalent deal of a four player game) then alternate drawing cards from the unused deck for two dummy players (you move, draw for a dummy, your opponent moves, draw for a dummy etc.). If a dummy player draws a Joker card, always advance the slowest bear. This allows for a very competitive game for two players.

Honeybears is a gem and the price couldn't be more reasonable. I highly recommend this game for anyone's collection! (By the way, my copy of the game came with beautiful wooden bear figures; not pawns as shown in the graphic.)

The theme seems goofy, but there's a good game hidden under it. This Reiner Knizia race game is somewhat akin to Titan: The Arena. Each player gets a hand full of cards which help move one color of bear down the track to the cave (the end of the race). Some cards are wild and can affect any bear. The trick is that points at the end are scored based on the cards you have left in your hand. So moving a bear forward towards the end removes points from your hand, but points are also determined by how far a bear gets in the race. Very clever.

Hiding in this apparent children's game is a quick little filler that will appeal to adults and serious gamers alike. In Honeybears, four bears are trying to make it from one end of the small board to the other - the premise being that they have just stolen some honey and want to get away from the irate bees as quickly as possible.

In this game no one bear is controlled by a single player, but each player can move any bear along the track by playing a card of the matching colour from their hand, dealt out at the start of each round. Cards will move one bear either one or two steps, as specified on the cards. There are also wild cards that allow the player to elect which bear to move. As soon as one bear reaches the finish line the round is over, and the player who moved the bear over the line scores a bonus.

It is the scoring that makes Honeybears such a fascinating game. For each bear, you score the product of how far the bear is along the track (there are regions from -2 to +3) and the sum of your unplayed cards in that bear's colour. This produces a dilemma - do you play a card for a bear, moving it into a higher-scoring region, but lowering your stake in the score for its final position, or do you wait and let someone else do it for you? On top of this, having two '1' cards for the same colour bear counts as a multiplier of five, not two. This makes it rarely beneficial to split pairs and stops the game from becoming a free-for-all.

Usually several rounds of Honeybears should be played to even out the somewhat large luck element. This luck element may put serious gamers off, but the game is so short - usually it is over in a couple of minutes - that it doesn't really matter. The cards and bear-shaped wooden tokens are altogether too cute for words. Lots of fun.

Honeybears is a tidy little game from Austrian company
Piatnik, which, before the description by their
attentive representative at Essen, looked like a Pigs
Trotters clone. That it isn't is entirely down to
Reiner Knizia's designing skills, because if I'd been
involved, there would be a law suit pending.

Honeybears involves moving four wooden bear dobbers
into various scoring zones by means a of a colourful
and durable pack of cards. These depict the four bears
involved -- red, yellow, blue, green -- plus some neutral
cards which permit the advancement of any bear.

So, play a card, move a bear (either one or two spaces,
as depicted by the honeypot icons), and prepare to
absorb the unique scoring method. Rather than hold
secret title to one of the bears, the cards retained
when one bear has reached the plus 3 area are matched
against the other zones. For example: Yellow has
finished, and Jan has one "double honeypot" yellow
card. This earns six points. She has two red "single
honeypot" cards, which add a further four points, the
red bear having finished one space behind yellow. Her
other coloured cards score zero (blue and green are in
the 0 area), whilst the neutral cards do not score. A
bonus of six points is awarded to the player who
concludes each heat, which I thought a might excessive.

If I've written this intelligibly, you will have
deduced that you need to quickly move the bear in which
you have a majority of cards (like Formel Eins), but
retain some to secure points. Which leads me to the
game's only blemish. If you are blessed with a hand of
mostly neutral cards and those of a single colour, you
will be firmly in the driving seat. But, played over
a few rounds, any imbalance will be washed away.

Interestingly enough, Honeybears is the one game from
Essen which my children have requested repeated
playings, which, I think, points to its market.